A U.S. Army general dispatched by senior Pentagon officials to bolster the collection of intelligence from prisoners in Iraq last fall inspired and promoted the use of guard dogs there to frighten the Iraqis, according to sworn testimony by the top U.S. intelligence officer at the Abu Ghraib prison.

According to the officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, the idea came from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who at the time commanded the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and was enacted under a policy approved by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military official in Iraq.

The report was denied.

“Miller never had a conversation with Colonel Pappas regarding the use of military dogs for interrogation purposes in Iraq. Further, military dogs were never used in interrogations at Guantanamo,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

Sarin gas confirmed

Comprehensive testing has confirmed the presence of the chemical weapon sarin in the remains of a roadside bomb discovered this month in Baghdad, a defense official said Tuesday.

The determination, made by a laboratory in the United States that the official would not identify, verifies what earlier field tests had found: The bomb was made from an artillery shell designed to disperse the nerve agent on the battlefield.

The origin of the shell remains unclear, and finding that out is a priority for the U.S. military, the defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Some analysts worry the 155-millimeter artillery shell, found rigged as a bomb on May 15, may be part of a larger stockpile of Iraqi chemical weapons that insurgents can now use. But no more have turned up, and several officials have said the shell may have been one that predated the 1991 Gulf War.